Online retailer Amazon asked North American cities to vie for a second Amazon headquarters last week, laying out a list of specific requirements for the kind of site it would consider: tax incentives, obviously, a zero-sum game that all states get suckered into playing. A large site, access to transit, a diverse community with good quality of life, near an international airport and a strong university system.

We've got a lot of that stuff, here in Michigan ... but we fall short in more ways than one.

So when a business clearly articulates its priorities, it's an opportunity to point out to lawmakers the tangible cost of letting your state rot.

Because this is what it takes to get lawmakers' attention. And that, friends, is contemptible.

But there's so much more. This is a state in which fewer than half of schoolchildren, those kids in so-called good suburban schools as well as struggling city schools, score proficient in math and reading. This is a state that has bet heavily on sprawl, a bet that is not working out so well. This is a state where our roads are still crumbling, and funds to fix them come from a half-baked legislative deal that will rob other state services. This is a state where cities have been left to languish too long, because too many lawmakers believe that suburbs and exurbs can thrive without strong central cities.

This is the lens through which we view all investments, these days. Good schools? Businesses wants those, so they can attract highly educated workers. A state Department of Environmental Quality? Should be a good partner for business. Good roads? Businesses need to transport goods and services. Walkable downtowns? So important when you're trying to attract millennial workers.

Gov. Rick Snyder's signature policy reform gave a $1.7-billion tax cut to businesses; that revenue was made up of increased taxes on people. It was important, the governor said, to make the state's business tax fair. That tax cut didn't result in more jobs.

Business has become the stick we use to push government to do what it ought to be doing in the first place -- investing in our state. Investing in us.

As our state scrambles to make a pitch for Amazon -- or Foxconn, or the next business du jour, remember that. Our lawmakers' priorities have become horribly twisted. And we have let it happen.